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Matthew Williams

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Matthew Williams is a counsel in the Doha office with more than a decade of experience in Qatar. Combining extensive international experience in construction, project finance, and arbitration with an in-depth knowledge of the Qatari legal market, Matthew is proficient at handling complex matters and providing clients with solutions.

While Matthew started his career as a construction and projects lawyer, he now has more than 10 years of experience in commercial arbitration, with a strong focus on construction arbitration. He has experience in delay and disruption claims, various disciplines of defects, and quantum. He has conducted numerous arbitrations under ICC, LCIA, QICCA, and KCAB. Matthew’s clients have been government entities, employers, contractors, and subcontractors.

With respect to construction projects, Matthew regularly advises clients on their front-end negotiations, including their contract management. Matthew also advises clients in large-scale infrastructure projects, including lenders and sponsors on both the project documentation and the financing and security arrangements. Matthew also advises clients in relation to Qatar law on general commercial matters, including data protection, intellectual property, employment, and consumer protection.

The financing of legal actions by third parties has grown exponentially since the early 2000s and is now common across many common law and civil law jurisdictions. It is still in its infancy in Qatar, but the Qatar International Centre for Conciliation and Arbitration (the “QICCA”) expressly recognised third party dispute funding in its 2024 rules update (the “QICCA Rules”).

This article seeks to provide a brief introduction to third party funding, and how it can make justice more accessible in a time when arbitration has become an expensive endeavour. While third party dispute funding may allow greater access to arbitration, it requires a careful balancing act between the interests of the claim’s stakeholders, and indeed those of the adverse party, with private equity investment demands.Continue Reading Qatar Third-Party Dispute Funding: An Introduction